Mock, Paper, Scissors

Yeah torture is always killer material at the Wingnuttian Komedy Klub open mic night.

(Think Progress)

Liz Cheney, THE MOST IMPORTANT DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF STATE FOR NEAR EASTERN AFFAIRS in our nation’s history was on the talkies today (for unknown or unknowable reasons, she keeps getting invited back) and she told a lie so big, bold, and so stunning it deserves the full pull-quote treatment:

As Attorney General (Michael) Mukasey has pointed out recently, when we prosecuted and successfully convicted people after the ’93 World Trade Center bombing, after the East African bombing, what it got us was 9/11 and 3,000 dead Americans.

This continues to support my theory that what the Cheney’s and the other dead-enders fear most is that if their torture-induced confessions cannot be introduced as evidence, that it will lead to the repudiation of their entire methodology for intelligence, and may in fact bring about an indictment of Blam-Blam and the other war criminals.

And make no mistake: Chimpy and Blam-Blam are war criminals. If we had any sort of leaders in Congress (Hello, Nancy Pelosi) who believed in the rule of law, Chimpy and Co. would have been brought up on War Crime charges and indicted by now.

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Listen to Blam-Blam breath as he lies. Amazing.

Liz Cheney, The most important deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs in our nation’s history and maybe ever, not to be out done by the nominal head of the GOP, that regional party of old white men, Dy-No-Mike, has launched her own snuff porn site, KeepAmericaSafe, which pretty much celebrates all things dark and tortured from the Blam-Blam/Chimpy years.

It is sort of a one-stop shop for all things that have gone disturbingly wrong since the ascension of Chimpy McStagger to this day, because Citizen of Kenya, Language-of-the-Koran-speaking, Closet-Muslim, socialist, magic-negro overlord, re-education camp counselor, and Nobel laureate The Carebear has gone back on pretty much all of his campaign promises that involved the War on Terror, the War on US Civil Liberties, and well, the War on Common Sense.

But I digress…

Working in tandem with her partner Bill Kristol, he of the alien unblinking stare and the absolutely bonkers thought processes, the topics that they cover are:

• War on Terror
• CIA Interrogation
• Gitmo Facility
• Iran
• Afghanistan
• Human Rights and Democracy

(Which one of these is not like the other!)

My favorite part, though, is the hot hunk of the day feature:

I understand he’s a Scorpio born on Soylent Blonde’s birthday, and he likes long walks on the beach…

Heh. Jake Tapper inadvertently made a funny.

For reasons that seem obvious to me, this confirms that Blam-Blam cannot conceive of any Attorney General acting independently. Take that, Gonzo.

…looking into whether torture laws were broken. Is that sort of like a pre-meeting?

AG Holder, did you borrow Ashcroft’s 8-Ball? You need to investigate to see if you need to investigate?

Scissorheads –

So once again, we at Mock, Paper, Scissors find ourselves challenged with some serious business, and we have to put down our spitball tubes, walk away slowly from the snark, and otherwise leave our childish ways behind us for just a moment.

You probably do not know (because the press has buried it pretty well) that one of our US soldiers has been captured in Afghanistan by the Taliban. The soldier, whose name is not given, walked off his base and was promptly captured. We only know this because the military tells us this. He (or she) is believed to be the first US soldier to be a prisoner of war in the 8 year old war.

This puts us in a strange position, as The Carebear only just this week validated Chimpy’s policy that he can detain “enemy combatants” indefinitely, and presumably torture them. (I don’t believe in the euphemism of “harsh interrogation techniques” – torture is torture is torture, to paraphrase Gertrude Stein.) And now one of our soldiers is, in effect, in the same limbo world and being held by the Taliban.

And so, suddenly, we are in a no-win scenario:

• The Taliban, if they choose to treat our US soldier with dignity and respect will have a propaganda tool unlike few others: they will have taken the moral higher ground, and they will no doubt be able to use this to their advantage.
• The Taliban, if they choose to torture our US soldier, will put the spotlight on the US policies of detaining and torturing prisoners. It will be hard for us to demand that this soldier is treated better than we profess to treat their people.

Knowing that the GOP mouth-breathers are going to latch onto this, I want to say this very carefully: I hope that the Taliban is caring for our guy better than we have been caring for their guys. This is not Blaming America First — as I will no doubt be accused of doing — this is hoping that their policies are more humane than ours.

I also hope that this might finally be a moral beacon to our politicians that when they discover that they cannot be outraged by torture as a policy of the enemy when we do it ourselves. Torture is not American, and we must work to have this repellant policy repealed.

(Hat tip: Tom Belt)

Because nothing is as funny as keeping innocent people in Gitmo when the court has ordered their release.

Rightwing blowhard, “Mancow” Muller of WLS Chicago (and formerly was here in SF) was waterboarded, on-air live (take that, Hannity you pussy. Some AM nobody did it…), lasted about 7 seconds and threw the toy cow that was his signal to stop. He likened it to nearly drowning as a kid.

It is way worse than I thought it would be, and that’s no joke. It is such an odd feeling to have water poured down your nose with your head back…It was instantaneous…and I don’t want to say this: absolutely torture.
I wanted to prove it wasn’t torture. They cut off our heads, we put water on their face…I got voted to do this but I really thought ‘I’m going to laugh this off.’

UPDATE: Here’s the video:

Of course, his torturers did not ask him to confess to anything, but he probably would have.

When last we left Blowfeldt Cheney, he was not shutting up. He still yammers on and on. Some say that he is trying to improve his legacy, I think he is laying the groundwork for his defense. If you get out in front early, your story becomes the one people recall, and then prosecutors have to work doubly hard for a conviction.

Blam-blam is a psycho, he has no interest in his legacy.

Long-time readers of Mock, Paper, Scissors know that I started off excited that Nancy Pelosi was going to be the Speaker. I thought of her as a tough, principled politician, someone who gets things done. And the bonus of the first female Speaker being from San Francisco was too delicious for words. I literally wept as I watched her be sworn in.

The joy did not last. With those absolutely despicable words, “Impeachment is off the table,” Pelosi lost me — for good. Besides abdicating her duty to protect and defend the Constitution, she alone changed us from a rule of law to a rule of people.

Taking impeachment off the table so very clearly gave Chimpy, Blam-Blam, and the entire gang of crooks carte blanche to do whatever they wanted, and they did.

So now the chickens come home to roost. Pelosi will (unfairly) be tarred with the torture scandal, and though she might survive it, she will be damaged. If there is any good to come from this, it might be Pelosi demanding an investigation — not a Truth Commission — but a real investigation into what the Bush Administration did and when they did it. Her motives will not be pure, not by any means, but if it brings all the crimes to light, it will be a good thing.

As for Pelosi, she is getting exactly what she deserved. And I could not be more sad and delighted.

“…but it would take me years and years to do it.”

Miss Lindseygurrrrrrrrrrrrrrl hops on the torture bandwagon. I seem to recall that Graham recoiled in horror during Grandpa Walnuts campaign at the thought of torture and supported the no-torturing amendment that Walnuts proposed.